Читать книгу Freaks - Darren Craske - Страница 8

I remember when I first asked Hestia about her fingers. She’d been shy about it which surprised me. I mean it’s not like she’d ever tried to hide them from anyone: her fingernails were stone – it was obvious.

She told me it had started when she was little. She’d wanted a hug from her dad and he’d said no, he’d told her to stop acting like a baby.

‘I felt it in my fingers and inside,’ she said. ‘It was cold and hard. And when I woke up next morning, this had happened.’

She held out her fingers to me and I wrapped my hands around them. They were rough against my skin and they were cold too.

Hestia’s ankles were stone as well. When she was eight she’d not been invited to her best friend’s birthday party. She was so sad, she said, that she’d cried from the moment she’d walked out of the school gates to when she’d fallen asleep deep into the night. She told me that, the morning after, when she’d gone to pull her socks on, she’d found that her ankles were exactly the same as her fingernails. Cold and rough and not really alive. She said she’d have cried if she’d had been able to, but she was dry.

To be honest I found her limp cute at the beginning, when we first met, when I told her it wasn’t a problem, that we’d work something out. I think I have a thing for girls like that; in imperfection lies beauty, or something.

And I think that’s why I like Amy. It’s the braces and her lisp – I’ve always been a sucker for speech impediments.

She’s a nice girl too. The best bit’s her skin – I like how it’s all smooth and warm and how she doesn’t mind me touching it.

I guess I’ve got a problem, and that’s what exactly to do about Hestia. I mean, I know I should tell her, but it’s difficult. I worry about how she’ll take it, about what it could do to her. You’d have thought that after eight years I’d know exactly how to handle her, how to handle this, but the truth is I’ve got no idea. I’m scared too. Recently her left breast became stone, completely without warning.

Maybe it’s best to leave it, or maybe it’s better to wait and see. Like I said to her all those years ago: we’ll work something out.